Sunskimmers

[Dr. Nil]

When flying from a witchpoint to a sun I hardly ever encounter any ships. This has made me wonder whether the game engine places sun skimmers and sunskim pirates on the planet-sun axis. Usually there's no reason to go sunskimming when you leave a station and if you sunskim it's often because you're not going to visit the planet (or station) so that would explain why they aren't encountered very often since the planet-sun axis will be the route least used by a player. If it is so, I suggest that the code is changed so sunskimmers and sunskim pirates would be placed on the witchpoint-sun axis instead. But perhaps it's just because the distance to the sun is much larger and leaves more room for missing the ships?

Another option would be to write a script to add ships on the w-s axis, but it just seems wastefull since the game already says it adds sunskimmers when entering a system - I just dont encounter them. Does anybody know where to look for these things and whether it's just a simple textfile that needs some sp's or ps's replaced with ws's or sw's.

[lolwhites]

I usually head to the sun after leaving the station, sunskim and then witchspace out, but rarely encounter anything along the planet-sun axis either. I remember that in BBC Elite I was always having dogfights near the sun, but it hardly ever happens in Oolite.

I only head straight to the sun from a witchpoint if my fuel is very low, and rarely have encounters then either. In fact, the safest route is probably witchpoint-sun-planet, but that's no fun at all. I wouldn't say there are significantly more encouters on the planet-sun axis than between the sun and the witchpoint.

[Captain Hesperus]

Funny that, I tend (7-10 times) encounter Fugitive or Offender pirates (flying Python + Sidewinder + Asp II Special combos or solo SuperCobra Fugitives) when I do a planet-sun run. I've even encountered a Woma and Sidewinder escorts heading insystem on my way out. Maybe he was topping up the tanks before dropping them off....

Captain Hesperus
"You can see my ship there on the pad. Yep, the hunk of junk Python with all the paint scraped off from bad dockings and countless fender-benders with pirates..."

[Cholmondely]

"Sunskimmers (Dr Nil, 2006) adds traffic to the sun-based space-lanes to skim fuel"

Am I correct that this is now part of the Vanilla game code?

[Switeck]

The problem is there's multiple "sun" routes...and only the one from planet to sun tends to be populated with anything.

Wichpoint to sun almost always has nothing, unless OXPs/OXZs add items. This is the route that people looking to avoid the main station are likely to use.
...And even in the case they refuel off the sun then head to the main station, they likely will be off-center from the planet to sun route and still miss most of the ship traffic there.

[Cody]

Wichpoint to sun almost always has nothing, unless OXPs/OXZs add items. This is the route that people looking to avoid the main station are likely to use.

<nods> WP/Sun is the route which needs some traffic. Not too much though, and not in every system.

[Switeck]

While the populator doesn't add any ships along that route, new ships arriving at the witchpoint can "choose" (coded to choose) to head to the sun as sun-skimmers. It's semi-rare. enteringTraderAI.plist hints just how rare.
But you'd have to wait 10+ minutes to perhaps hours to see a steady-state level of traffic going from WP to sun.

For the players that take the quick route and torus to the main station away from the WP-planet route, they're ready to leave before the WP-sun route even starts to get used.

[Cholmondely]

So it sounds, gentlemen, from your words on the matter, that this .oxp still has a function in v.1.90 and that there is point in creating a wiki-page for it and linking it in.

New wiki page: https://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Sunskimmers_OXP

[Switeck]

Depends on whether or not it works with Oolite post v1.80

[Cody]

Depends on whether or not it works with Oolite post v1.80

I'm currently unable to do any testing, but it throws no errors with Oolite 1.91 - Cholly?

[Cholmondely]

Depends on whether or not it works with Oolite post v1.80

I'm currently unable to do any testing, but it throws no errors with Oolite 1.91 - Cholly?

I got the following (which I presume means that it still works, just!):

Code: Select all

22:07:38.189 [oxp-standards.error] OOStandardsInternal (OODebugStandards.m:92): OXP /Users/accountname/Library/Application Support/Oolite/AddOns/sunskimmers.oxp has no manifest.plist
22:07:40.151 [oxp-standards.error] OOStandardsInternal (OODebugStandards.m:92): OXP /Users/accountname/Library/Application Support/Oolite/AddOns/sunskimmers.oxp has no manifest.plist
    ~/Library/Application Support/Oolite/AddOns/sunskimmers.oxp
22:07:54.249 [oxp-standards.deprecated] OOStandardsInternal (OODebugStandards.m:92): Legacy script /Users/accountname/Library/Application Support/Oolite/AddOns/sunskimmers.oxp/Config/script.plist is deprecated

Can't tell if sunskimmers actually does anything. Tried a couple of pared-down runs (virtually OXP-less for me!) and there seemed to be the same minimal traffic on the Witchpoint-Space run whether I was running sunskimmers or not.

[Cody]

Managed one speeded-up WP/Sun run (TAF x8), and almost immediately got jumped by three rather nasty bandits.
That didn't feel normal, but as you say, it's hard to tell for sure. I've forgotten how to test such stuff.

The sunskimmers script.plist looks straightforward enough, so it should work. But what do I know?

[phkb]

Try this out: Sunskimmer.oxz

I recreated Dr Nil's original but used the more current populator methods. I also included some logging elements, so you can check your log file to see if anything was spawned.

I did give this a CC-BY-NC-NA 3.0 license, because while Dr Nil's original doesn't have a license, there isn't any of the original code in this version (apart from the readme). Probably a grey area (copying the idea, not the implementation of said idea), so if someone has some legal reason to can this, just let me know. If there are no objections, and we get some good test runs done, I'll add it to the manager shortly.

Also, I've put this in the "Misc" section for now, but feel free to suggest a better group.

[Cody]

Thankee Admiral!

[Cody]

I also included some logging elements, so you can check your log file to see if anything was spawned.

Do these look about right, positions-wise?

Code: Select all

15:25:59.896 [Sunskimmers]: 3 ship(s) added in pirate_2
15:25:59.896 [Sunskimmers]: [Ship "Krait" position: (2.05281e+006, -123119, -611068) scanClass: CLASS_NEUTRAL status: STATUS_IN_FLIGHT]
15:25:59.896 [Sunskimmers]: [Ship "Wolf Mark II" position: (2.06164e+006, -113547, -602974) scanClass: CLASS_NEUTRAL status: STATUS_IN_FLIGHT]
15:25:59.897 [Sunskimmers]: [Ship "Fer-de-Lance" position: (2.0594e+006, -117529, -603559) scanClass: CLASS_NEUTRAL status: STATUS_IN_FLIGHT]
15:25:59.898 [Sunskimmers]: 2 ship(s) added in pirate_3
15:25:59.898 [Sunskimmers]: [Ship "Wolf Mark II" position: (1.92724e+006, -118785, -570392) scanClass: CLASS_NEUTRAL status: STATUS_IN_FLIGHT]
15:25:59.899 [Sunskimmers]: [Ship "Wolf Mark II" position: (1.92527e+006, -110664, -570454) scanClass: CLASS_NEUTRAL status: STATUS_IN_FLIGHT]
15:25:59.900 [Sunskimmers]: 1 ship(s) added in pirate_4
15:25:59.900 [Sunskimmers]: [Ship "Adder" position: (1.77745e+006, -112271, -524394) scanClass: CLASS_NEUTRAL status: STATUS_IN_FLIGHT]
15:25:59.901 [Sunskimmers]: 1 ship(s) added in trader_2
15:25:59.901 [Sunskimmers]: [Ship "Cobra Mark III" position: (685877, -37510.6, -216769) scanClass: CLASS_NEUTRAL status: STATUS_IN_FLIGHT]
15:25:59.907 [Sunskimmers]: 1 ship(s) added in trader_3
15:25:59.907 [Sunskimmers]: [Ship "Moray Medical Boat" position: (823791, -55684.2, -230583) scanClass: CLASS_NEUTRAL status: STATUS_IN_FLIGHT]
15:25:59.908 [Sunskimmers]: 1 ship(s) added in trader_4
15:25:59.908 [Sunskimmers]: [Ship "Moray Medical Boat" position: (956967, -46185.9, -276767) scanClass: CLASS_NEUTRAL status: STATUS_IN_FLIGHT]
15:25:59.909 [Sunskimmers]: 1 ship(s) added in trader_5
15:25:59.909 [Sunskimmers]: [Ship "Cobra Mark III" position: (1.09925e+006, -71901.9, -314547) scanClass: CLASS_NEUTRAL status: STATUS_IN_FLIGHT]
15:26:43.664 [Sunskimmers]: 1 ship(s) added in pirate_4
15:26:43.664 [Sunskimmers]: [Ship "Fer-de-Lance" position: (-2.68353e+006, 67220.2, 1.13305e+006) scanClass: CLASS_NEUTRAL status: STATUS_IN_FLIGHT]
15:26:43.668 [Sunskimmers]: 3 ship(s) added in pirate_2
15:26:43.668 [Sunskimmers]: [Ship "Mamba" position: (-3.09872e+006, 72539.1, 1.3071e+006) scanClass: CLASS_NEUTRAL status: STATUS_IN_FLIGHT]
15:26:43.668 [Sunskimmers]: [Ship "Mamba" position: (-3.0979e+006, 75175.8, 1.30257e+006) scanClass: CLASS_NEUTRAL status: STATUS_IN_FLIGHT]
15:26:43.668 [Sunskimmers]: [Ship "Mamba" position: (-3.09685e+006, 73182.7, 1.31046e+006) scanClass: CLASS_NEUTRAL status: STATUS_IN_FLIGHT]
15:26:43.671 [Sunskimmers]: 2 ship(s) added in pirate_3
15:26:43.671 [Sunskimmers]: [Ship "Adder" position: (-2.884e+006, 72401.1, 1.21895e+006) scanClass: CLASS_NEUTRAL status: STATUS_IN_FLIGHT]
15:26:43.671 [Sunskimmers]: [Ship "Moray Star Boat" position: (-2.89154e+006, 66228.4, 1.22055e+006) scanClass: CLASS_NEUTRAL status: STATUS_IN_FLIGHT]
15:26:43.672 [Sunskimmers]: 1 ship(s) added in trader_4
15:26:43.672 [Sunskimmers]: [Ship "Moray Medical Boat" position: (-1.4464e+006, 23147.3, 600295) scanClass: CLASS_NEUTRAL status: STATUS_IN_FLIGHT]
15:26:43.676 [Sunskimmers]: 1 ship(s) added in trader_5
15:26:43.676 [Sunskimmers]: [Ship "Cobra Mark III" position: (-1.65646e+006, 45500, 684635) scanClass: CLASS_NEUTRAL status: STATUS_IN_FLIGHT]

It's an interesting selection of ships. The three Mambas look like fun!